How to make heart shaped lights

Whenever there's something I don't want to do, I spend more time on facebook & blogspot.

Anyways, I was looking at Elizabeth's blog to see if she wrote a response back, and I thought to myself, "oh, I'll write an entry about heart shaped lights!"  since it was, after all, right there, screaming for attention.  Plus, my camera is already out, and I've been taking pictures of hearts all day.  This just makes sense.

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How to make "Heart Shaped Lights" or Heart Bokeh


Materials:

Construction Paper.   I prefer black, but other colors work too.
Scissors
Computer, printer, microsoft word (or a picture of a heart or something)
DSLR with a decent lens (I personally prefer 50mm f/1.4 but other people might have their preferences)




1.  Go to word, and insert the heart symbol, or whatever it is that you want to make.  Print it on the construction paper.








2. Go find a filter (or whatever.  you can even use your lens) that fits the lens of your choice, draw around it, and cut it.





3.  Fold the paper in half, and cut out the heart





4.  You're pretty much done.  Go find some lights, like this one:





5. Put the paper you made in front of the lens.  (yes, you're covering your lens with the heart paper you just made).

6.  make sure that your aperture is considerably open (like f/1.4), and that your camera is out of focus.  Take the shot.



(shot with 50mm f/1.4)


Tada!  Not to shabby huh?


Just make sure that you're not using a wide angle lens.  This is NOT what you're going for:



(shot at 18mm)

...unless you want that look of course.  But as far as heart shaped lights go, this is not the way to go.

you want something closer to this:



Enjoy! this works amazingly well with christmas lights and stuff ^^